Madison County Commissioner Dustin Parkinson narrowly survived a three-way Republican primary Tuesday, winning his District 2 seat by 34 votes in a race that swung on a small fraction of the county’s electorate.

Parkinson took 1,552 votes, or 45 percent, against JC Weber’s 1,518 votes, or 44 percent. Delwyn Klingler finished third with 398 votes, or 11 percent. The closeness of the result — barely a percentage point separating the top two finishers — underscores how thin the margin can be in low-turnout county commission races, where every precinct matters.

District 1 unopposed

The county’s other commission race on the ballot, District 1, was not competitive. Incumbent Brent Mendenhall ran unopposed in the Republican primary and finished with 3,955 votes. Neither commission seat drew a Democratic challenger for November, so both Parkinson and Mendenhall are expected to retain their offices through the general election.

Parkinson said in a statement that he was grateful to the community and described the race as a hard-fought one. The county commission controls the Madison County budget, road and bridge programs, and land-use decisions in one of Idaho’s fastest-growing counties — a region where population pressure from Brigham Young University-Idaho and the broader Rexburg corridor has made county-level decisions consequential.